Scott D. Pierce

Hank Stuever

The episodes surf hypnotically along, succeeding less on thematic concerns and more on Atlanta’s unerring knack for portraiture. The show introduces us to its world and its inhabitants without declaring its intent in every other scene.

Isaac Feldberg

Atlanta is one of the year’s best, and it is like nothing else on television, maybe ever. Imagine a series with the ambition and charge of The Wire, the reflective gallows comedy of Louie, and Glover’s unique brand of subtle brilliance--and then you’ll be getting close to having some sense of where Atlanta seems to be heading. It’s a series you can’t afford to miss.

Robert Bianco

Matt Zoller Seitz

Atlanta and Better Things take C.K.’s refinements to a new level, merge them with worldviews that you rarely see represented on TV, and tell their stories with such economy and grace that you might feel as if a new language were being worked out before your eyes.

Verne Gay

Chuck Barney

Though the show contains laugh-out-loud moments, it occasionally proves to be more melancholy than mirthful. Along the way, it has some sharp things to say about race, gender, the absurdity of celebrity and the nagging fear of failure. Glover's Atlanta, it turns out, has all the right beats.

David Wiegand

The scripts for the four episodes made available to critics are as richly nuanced as anything you’ll see on TV or, to be sure, in a movie theater. You will not only know these characters after only one episode, you’ll be hooked on them, as well. In so many areas, Atlanta sets the bar exceptionally high.

Ben Travers

Jeff Jensen

“We need a chance to fail,” says Earn, bemoaning a one-chance (or no-chance), perfection-or-bust culture. Atlanta--a triumph of risk taking by its network and creator--moves you with this truth and others.

Vikram Murthi

Matt Webb Mitovich

An intense drug deal plays out with character-based nuance, more about the personalities in the room than the chance that guns will start blazing, while an episode set largely in the holding room of a jail finds drama in the assorted, transfixing plights of one-off characters.

Matthew Gilbert

It’s melancholy, amusing, clever, insightful, humane, and, with its beautifully shot Atlanta location, steeped in local specificity. There are a few moments in the four episodes sent to critics when the emotional beats are hazy, the ideas vague, the vibe too meditative; but there are many, many more points when the show blows you away with its intelligence, humanity, and unwillingness to rush or telegraph any of its jokes or misfortunes.

Robert Lloyd

Melanie McFarland

The deliberate pacing and dreamy, surreal tone of Atlanta may prove too off-putting for viewers searching for easy entertainment. But those thirsting for a fearless, fresh perspective in comedy will find much to appreciate here.

Rob Owen

Ellen Gray

One thing Atlanta does particularly well is to convey the shakiness of an economy in which a child of working- or middle-class parents can struggle, even end up homeless, setting it against the backdrop of the less-official economy on which many rely. That Atlanta manages to be drily funny, too, is a gift.

Allison Keene

Like Baskets or even Louie, Atlanta is a deeply specific portrait of a certain way of life, one that’s often desperate but that’s tempered--for our benefit--by a casual, sometimes even caustic humor. These moments are occasionally punctuated by bursts of violence, some of them shocking, but it never feels like there’s a statement being made so much as truth being shown.